


Vueil un novel chant comenzar

by Carmarthen



Category: Knight's Fee - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Anglo-Norman Britain, Canon Era, First Time, Friendship, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/pseuds/Carmarthen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I wish, sometimes, that I were still Randal the Dog-boy who slept at the foot of your bed, and not the Lord of Dean.”</i>
</p><p>A little post-canon beginning; rating somewhere between G and T for very implied sexuality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vueil un novel chant comenzar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



> Happy, um, Fandom Stocking Day? Or Epiphany, if you do that. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Thanks to Smillaraaq, osprey_archer, and Isis for the beta!

Dean had not changed so much since Herluin had been there last, before Richard had been killed. The warm little solar with its embroidered hangings had been built since that last visit, and the paint was fresher, so that the scarlet and saffron and sky blue creatures climbing the timber supports of the wall and lounging along the roof-beams seemed to dance cheerfully in the flickering golden firelight. It looked half a Saxon hall again, Herluin thought with some amusement, but only half. The fire was laid with clear-burning applewood, and someone had thrown a handful of rosemary on it, which gave off its scent into the warmth of the solar.

But Randal had changed a great deal, from the Imp he had saved from Hugh Goch’s wrath, so many years ago; his hair was still a barley-pale thatch, thrust impatiently back from his face whenever it fell in his eyes, but there was very little else of the Imp in him now, save the dog’s loyalty. The manor rested on his shoulders like a cloak, as it had for Sir Everard; and Herluin was very glad, then, that he had been a foundling, with no manor to clip his wings forever.

They had been sitting in companionable silence since the wine had run low in their cups, and after a time Herluin had taken his harp from its gold-embroidered bag and begun plucking at the strings softly, idle little scraps of half-remembered tunes that seemed to float away from his fingers as soon as he played them. It was not often that he played for simple pleasure, with no thought to please his lord or anyone else, no more desire than to make music.

Herluin called music from the harp without thought, old songs, songs that had been sung at Dean long before the Normans ever came to England; the kinds of songs he had not played in years at Robert de Bellême’s side. He remembered Ancret singing in her low dark voice as she kneaded bread, when they were all young and the future stretched before them all like a great branching road, with adventure at the end of every path:

_Three birds perched on an apple spray,  
And the blossom was not more white than they..._

He almost opened his mouth to sing, but then Randal, who had been slumped on his stool, staring at the lees in the bottom of his wine-cup, said, “I wish, sometimes, that I were still Randal the Dog-boy who slept at the foot of your bed, and not the Lord of Dean.”

Herluin’s hands skipped on the strings, the phrase ending in a discordant jangle and buzz. He pressed his palm to the strings to quiet the harp. Randal's head was still bent over the cup, his face cast in shadow by the fire.

"I mean--I would not give up Dean for anything--I just--" Randal flushed and went silent.

Herluin had not much liked the Imp sleeping at his feet; he had always worried about kicking the boy, and it had made the narrow bed in Arundel even more cramped. He liked the idea of Randal the man sleeping at his feet even less. But Herluin did not think it an accident that Randal had not said _across your door,_ and at any rate it was the meaning of what he said that mattered, not the words themselves.

So Herluin slipped his harp back into its bag and set it aside, slowly, gently, as if there were no hurry at all in the world. "Hy my! Is that so?" he said, keeping his voice light, as if Randal had spoken of nothing much. "Let you come over by me, then, Imp."

Randal looked up with a start, his hand jerking so that he nearly tipped the cup over. And now, even in the flickering light cast by the pale flame of the applewood on the fire, Herluin could see in Randal's face the same mingled terror and hope he remembered from the grubby Saxon dog-boy fourteen years ago.

Nay, it was not the same; for then Randal had been afraid of Hugh Goch; now, Herluin rather thought, it was his own heart he feared.

Well, was it not so for all men, at some time or another?

Herluin stretched, lazily, his shoulders cracking a little. He knew enough of dogs to know that the wary ones were more like to approach if you pretended not to care whether they did or not.

After a moment, Randal rose from his stool, tossed the lees of his wine into the fire with a queerly proud air, and folded himself down houndwise by Herluin's feet. He said nothing, but he hesitated an instant before leaning his head against Herluin's knee.

It was none so comfortable for Herluin to have Randal lean up against him, and it was likely worse for Randal, for Herluin did not think anyone would say his bony knee would make a fine pillow. But some of that weight had already seemed to lift from those wide, square-set shoulders, so Herluin sat still, forcing himself to relax. After a moment he reached down and set a hand on Randal's pale hair, lightly, so that he might take it away in an instant and pretend he had meant nothing by it, but Randal only sighed and settled a bit, his cheek pressed to Herluin's thigh.

"Will you sing for me?" Randal mumbled.

Randal would make playing a harp difficult, and besides, Herluin did not wish to dislodge him to fetch it. The moment seemed as fragile as a robin's eggshell; if he moved, he rather thought he would find Randal on his own stool again, muttering of foolishness and the late hour. So, a song that would sound well enough on its own; he had heard a song in Normandy less than a year ago, from a minstrel out of Aquitaine...

_Amors es douza a l'intrar_  
 _Et amara al departir,_  
 _Q'en un jorn vos fara plorar,_  
 _Et autre jogar e burdir..._

"It sets my chest to aching," Randal said, after Herluin had let his voice die away on the last note; he sounded desolate. Perhaps it was as well that Randal did not understand the words: _Love is sweet when it comes and bitter when it goes...._

“La, it is only a song,” Herluin said, feeling guilty. He had not meant to make it sound so melancholy, but sometimes the music took him that way, without his willing it. Perhaps it was something about Dean; his old memories of Richard, and the knowledge that soon he would be on the road again, back to de Bellême’s court in Normandy.

"Oh, Herluin, I wish you could stay."

"You could command it," Herluin said, blandly. Randal’s hair was soft and fine under his fingers; Herluin was tempted to let his hand drift lower, to the nape of Randal’s neck, bare and pale gold in the firelight. After a moment he did, resting his hand against Randal’s skin. A faint shiver ran through Randal, but he pressed into the touch, just a little. “De Braose gave you me, to do with what you would, after all.”

“Do not mock me.” Randal’s voice was trembling a little, but he did not look up, although the muscles of his shoulder felt tense against Herluin’s thigh. “If Sir Randal the Lord of Dean may not command it, then how should Randal the Dog-boy? And I would not wish to keep you against your will; a swallow cannot live in a cage.”

“Aye, well,” said Herluin, “but even a swallow must have a home to return to, must he not? Perhaps someday, when I am too old for flying, I shall come home to Dean, and play my harp by your fire.” He had meant it as a pleasant lie, a bit of comfort, but as the words fell from his tongue they had the ring of truth. Herluin was growing older, in the way of all men, and life with Robert de Bellême was not what it had been. Perhaps he would ride back up the hawthorn-lined track winding through the Downs for good, someday.

He laid a hand on Randal’s shoulder. “Come, it is late and my leg grows stiff. Where am I to sleep?”

Randal looked up then, at last; Herluin saw him swallow hard, and then he said, “It is warmer with two.”

“La, we cannot have the Lord of Dean’s bed cold,” said Herluin, surprising a shy smile from Randal, whose bed he suspected had been cold for a long time.

Randal turned away to bank the fire, humming quietly, a mangled bee-sound that Herluin thought, wincing, must have been Randal's attempt at the Occitan love-song.

"God keep you, Imp, for you have no more music in you than you did when we first met.”

"Is it so?" Randal looked up, and his face split suddenly into a fierce grin that minded Herluin again that Randal was no longer a boy, but a blooded knight and a fighting man. "Well then, my lord Herluin, will you stop my mouth?"

Herluin smiled back and shrugged, slowly. "I might, if the mood takes me."

The bed was indeed warmer with two, and after, tangled together with Randal under the heavy wool blankets, Herluin thought that it might not be so bad after all to someday--someday--call Dean his home, and its Lord his own.

Not so bad at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Herluin is a little early to be a troubadour (or a minstrel, for that matter), and I couldn't find any secular songs from the right period, so the Occitan song he sings is slightly anachronistic. It's from "[Ab lo temps qe fai refreschar](http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/cercamon/cmn2.php)" by Cercamon (active 1135-1145), a Gascon troubadour who spent much of his career in the court of William X of Aquitaine.
> 
> The full translation of the quoted lyric is
> 
> _Love is sweet when it comes_  
>  _and bitter when it goes,_  
>  _for one day it'll make you weep_  
>  _and another scamper and cheer_
> 
> The other song, _Three birds perched on an apple spray..._ , is from Rosemary Sutcliff's _Sword at Sunset_ , where Ygerna sings it in a decidedly less pleasant context.
> 
> The story is set a few years after Tenchebrai, circa 1108, and owes some context for Herluin's backstory to Isis's "[Minstrel's Song](http://archiveofourown.org/works/594056)."


End file.
